A man who keeps a diary pays,Due toll to many tedious days;...But life becomes eventful--then,His busy hand forgets the pen.Most books, indeed, are records lessOf fulness than of emptiness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even bellig...erence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

I have every characteristic of a night person--a distaste for bosses, a hatred of the expected, an obsession with gaining an ultim...ately nonexistent freedom--every quality except one. I can't stay awake after a while. I fall asleep.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

How might one describe Max Beerbohm to someone who knows nothing about him? Well, for a start, one might imagine D.H. Lawrence. Pi...cture the shagginess of Lawrence, his thick beard, his rough-cut clothes, his disdain for all the social and physical niceties. Recall his passionateness--his passion, so to say, for passion itself--his darkness, his gloom. Think back to his appeal to the primary instincts, his personal messianism, his refusal to deal with anything smaller than capital "D" Destiny. Do not neglect his humorlessness, his distaste for all that otherwise passed for being civilized, his blood theories and manifold roiling hatreds. Have you, then, D.H. Lawrence firmly in mind? Splendid. Now reverse all of Lawrence's qualities and you will have a fair beginning notion of Max Beerbohm, who, after allowing that Lawrence was a man of "unquestionable genius," felt it necessary to add, "he never realized, don't you know--he never suspected that to be stark, staring mad is somewhat of a handicap to a writer."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The great end of life is not knowledge, but action. What men need is as much knowledge as they can assimilate and organize into a ...basis for action; give them more and it may become injurious. One knows people who are as heavy and stupid from undigested learning as other are from over-fulness of meat and drink.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Misanthropes have some admirable if paradoxical virtues. It is no exaggeration to say that we are among the nicest people you are ...likely to meet. Because good manners build sturdy walls, our distaste for intimacy makes us exceedingly cordial "ships that pass in the night." As long as you remain a stranger we will be your friend forever.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The love of new acquaintance comes not so much from being weary of what we had before, or from any satisfaction there is in change..., as from the distaste we feel in being too little admired by those that know us too well, and the hope of being more admired by those that know us less.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »